Distributed Wireless Sensor Network in IoT Hydroponic Monitoring System

Parameters like air temperature, air humidity, and air pressure are necessary for the plantation sector, especially hydroponics because air temperature and air humidity can affect the growth of hydroponic plants. Data regarding air temperature and air humidity must be monitored in order to maintain the quality of the hydroponic plants. However, it will be difficult to digitally cover a massive hydroponic plantation. Therefore, a tool is needed that is able to retrieve air temperature and humidity data from several distributed adjacent places or places that are not covered by Wi-Fi so that the data retrieval can be carried out practically and efficiently. The use of radio frequency networks is an alternative and solution for sending data over short or long distances. The nRF24L01 radio frequency module is a module with a relatively cheap price and low current consumption. The experiment shows that our proposed distributed wireless sensor network model is applicable to transferring data efficiently from the distributed microcontroller clients (sensor nodes) to the microcontroller gateway (the central node). The maximum distance of the nRF24L01 PA LNA radio module is 321.8 m and the maximum distance of the nRF24L01 radio module is 7.35 m to maintain a stable data transfer. The designed architecture is successfully implemented and executed to transmit air temperature and humidity data and other required data between the sensor nodes and the central node. The maximum number of characters that can be sent and received by the nRF24L01 radio module is 28 characters.